Public Place

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feb -- 2008: "Public Place" -- an historic New York City (Brooklyn) gas works by another name... After simmering on the pot of potential remediation for nigh onto 20 years (since 1980), the site of the historic (1859) Citizens Gas Light Company's 12th Ward Gas Works (AKA Carroll Gardens Station), bordered by the vintage 4th Place and Hoyt and Smith Streets (now 5th & Smith Streets) and fronting on Gowanus Creek (the 1867 Canal was designed by Army Engineer Major David Douglas and took 20 years of negotiation to result in its dredged construction, from 1849), has entered active redevelopment under the new name of Public Place, as a City-authorized private-sector project. The site is complex, not only geologically but also for its past history, which includes the February 1894 explosion of a 40,000 gal naphtha tank (naphtha was a coal-gas residual product), the presence of a U.S. Government toluene recovery plant in World War I, and the heavy-oil conversions of the plant's carburetted water gas generating equipment in the early 1930s. Brooklyn Union Gas Company, the successor owner, decommissioned the plant in 1959 and passed the land to the City, by condemnation, in 1975. This FMGP has been under remedial investigation by several consultants, for the past 23 years (since 1985), as a degree of remedial responsibility passed from BUG to KeySpan, and now to National Grid. The 1892 representation on the Brooklyn City 12th Ward street map (click for large version) shows the large gas yard with three gas holders.

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